#220 HAPPY HOLIDAYS with Stories and Photos

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR. Let’s hope that the gifts and trips that the new year brings will all be good. That brings me to the topic of this post: Best Christmas Gifts and Trips and other Gifts supported by some holiday/winter photos.

The Best Christmas Gift I Ever Gave 

Without a doubt the best gift I ever gave to anyone was the Christmas gift I gave to Anne one of the first years living in Canby (1985 or 86-ish, and then repeated). Not being able to spend a lot of money on a gift, I was forced to come up with something special. What I came up with was The Twelve Dates of Christmas. Probably not original to me, but I was winging it.

I started planning and preparing the surprise early in the fall because my plan was to have everything ready to give on Thanksgiving Day. On that day I presented Anne with a calendar with 12 days highlighted by a planned activity. I had scheduled concerts, meals, and activities that extended from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas vacation. Included in the events were special dinners out, such as a dinner at Amadeus in Milwaukie using our 2-for-1 dine out card (the Canby speech team sold the books as a money raiser). Concerts began with The Trail Band the day after Thanksgiving and included Tall Jazz at the Old Church in Portland. Other activities included The Revels Play in Portland and local Holiday Festivals  and Bazaars. 

Anne was totally surprised and I even impressed myself with the ingenuity of the project. We both enjoyed the whole idea and the individual events. This was a gift that kept on giving—we had Twelve Dates of Christmas in our Holiday Traditions for several years, until we became too busy with other activities. I’m sure I will never find a better Christmas gift to give.        

Winter Golf

John Day River

The Best Christmas Gift I Ever Got

The best Christmas present I ever received was received on Christmas Day 1953 in Sacramento when I was eight. At Nona’s house on that Christmas my parents gave me a new Schwinn 28” black bicycle. I didn’t have a bike and my best friend, Michael, had already got one on Christmas Eve. Mike lived across the street from my grandparents, so it was appropriate that I got mine at Nona’s. There were only two problems: I had never ridden a bike on my own and I was too short to get on the bike even though we’d adjusted the pedals. I solved both problems that day. First, I got extra lift by standing on the sidewalk while the bike was in the gutter which was lower. The second problem was solved by falling several times and getting right back on the tough bike. Never in the history of bikedom was a two-wheeler more loved and abused.

Best Christmas Vacation Trip I Ever Had

The best Christmas vacation trip I ever took was also our first trip as a married couple. When we married it was in a rush since I had been drafted even though I was teaching in ghetto community. If my deferment didn’t come through I wanted to be married and for Anne to get benefits. We had a church wedding with a few friends as guests, but no parents. Anne had already met my parents, but I was only a picture in the South Salem yearbook to Anne’s family. The deferment came through and Christmas vacation would be my first meeting of my new family. 

Anne and I left LA early in the morning heading to Sacramento (my folks) and then on to Salem. That’s when the adventure started. Half way up the Grapevine the snow started piling up. Before we reached the top we turned around and headed for Santa Barbara and the longer, warmer route. I called Sacramento and told them our change of route and asked Dad to get us chains for our new Opel GTI—we’d need them to get over the Siskiyou mountains  between California and Oregon. It took us an extra four hours to get to my folks, but we now had chains for the next leg.

The next day was to be a twelve hour trip to Salem…was to be! Because of the giant snow storm, it took us 17 hours of driving time and on the way we found that we didn’t know how use the car heater or front window defroster—who in LA even knew what a defroster was. I had to stop every few miles and scrape the ice off the windscreen while we wore all the warm clothes we owned.  We saw a dead person underneath a car that had slid off the jack while chaining up. Thankfully, the body was covered. We paid people to help get chained up properly. I learned how to drive with chains on. We were one of the last cars allowed through before the police closed the Interstate at Weed.

We stopped in Grants Pass for a break and I met Anne’s family friends Pete and Janette Walt—Anne’s mom was jokingly miffed that Janette met me before she did. We pulled into Anne’s house late in the night and were met in the yard by Bev, one of Anne’s sisters, with a hug and a beer for me. Mom and Dad Holweger met us at the door with the warmest welcome imaginable.

We stayed in Salem for a week where I became an accepted member of the family. We also learned that all I had to do was open a special vent to get the Opel’s heater to work—open one vent and we could have been warm and defrosted the whole trip. A new family, a grand holiday, and an adventure as well.

The Best Surprise Gift I Ever Got

Being a freshman at Montclair HS was exciting. I got introduced to real photography in a year long class which led to a life-long love affair with cameras. I  also got my first experiences with public speaking when I was encouraged to present a guided slide show of astronomy to several science classes which led to another life-long love and my career. But the year was also a traumatic one. Mom and Dad were having problems which led to Dad leaving us for a while. To get the family back together we (Mom, my seven year old sister, and I) had to move from SoCal to Salem, Oregon. I didn’t want to move, but there were no other options.  My straight A grades dropped and my teachers noticed. They did some checking and talking to me and found out what was going on. They continually checked on me and encouraged me. As the end of the school year and the move to Oregon approached, a special meeting of the science club was called and my general science teacher, E. P. Gosswiller, and Science Dept. Head, Orval Peterson, awarded me a special science prize. The prize was a first year astronomy text from CalTech inscribed with the following: “Presented to Robert Jones in appreciation for your enthusiastic interest in science and for also having presented the most outstanding science project in the Montclair High School during the 1959 - 1960 school year. Your Science Teachers” and it was signed by both Mr, Gosswiller and Mr. Peterson. 

My teachers will never know what a difference they made in my life and what life savers they really were. My hope is that all of you will find or have found the Mr. Gosswillers and Mr. Petersons of your lives when you need them.

NEXT: We’ll both be surprised. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR